20th December 2008 Archive

The Recording Industry Association of America has signaled a major strategy shift in its war against the downloading of copyrighted music, saying it would largely abandon its practice of suing violators. Instead, the RIAA will work with internet service providers to sever abusers' net connections.

The US Department of Justice wants to bust an alleged monopoly by Microsemi, a California-based firm that sells high-reliability electronic kit to the government for military applications, satellites, and spacecraft.

If you've been waiting for the Chevy Volt or Toyota's as-yet unnamed offering before you buy a plug-in hybrid automobile, you'll need to sit tight until their planned 2010 releases. If you must have a plug-in right now, however, you'll need to move to China. That'd be the PRC, not Taiwan.

Coffee Republic is the latest entity to launch an NFC-based pre-paid system for those who like to pony up in advance for their caffeine fix and have their usage tracked in exchange for a ten per cent rebate.

Orange is pondering a foray into Kindle territory. Innovative network application is all very well, but the company wants to go further and make innovative devices to allow its customers to run up their bills in new and interesting ways.

There is a lot of bad economic news out there, and sometimes, it is easy to wallow in despair. But there is some good news if you are on the IT staff here in the United States. According to Robert Half Technology's latest survey, which asks CIOs and IT managers about their staffing plans for the first quarter of 2009, the vast majority of companies are planning to keep the staff they have, with only a slightly larger number of shops saying they would be making layoffs compared to a year ago.

We rather like TVonics here at Vulture Central because its kit is British designed and made, and rather stylish. More to the point, for the large number of people who don't understand all this digital switchover malarkey, its devices work right out of the box.